Ghost Wing (The Ragnarok Saga Book 4)

by Kevin McLaughlin

  Sam turned in place and saw…herself. Her own face stared back at her. Her body stood there, dressed in an Army uniform instead of the armor she wore. She relaxed a little, realizing who she was looking at right away. If she was involved, it couldn’t be that bad.

  “Hi, sis,” the other Samantha called out.

  The little man standing there with her looked back and forth between the two of them like he wasn’t sure which one to address first. His eyes were wide, but he didn’t look stupid. Far from it, there was a curiosity burning in those eyes that made Sam chuckle under her breath. She was pretty sure the stranger was responsible for bringing her to this place. But she trusted the other Samantha like she’d only trust herself.

  Which made sense, since from a certain point of view that was her other self. As far as Sam knew, she was the only existing copy of a human mind where the human being copied was also still alive. The Samantha standing in front of her was a projection from the physical world into her virtual space.

  They might call each other sisters, but they were much closer than that. Everything the physical Samantha had experienced and known over the course of her life, the virtual Sam knew as well. Their lives diverged on the day Sam was copied away from the original consciousness. It made them more than sisters, but not quite the same people.

  Sam trusted herself enough to know Samantha would never knowingly put her in harm’s way. It was enough to encourage her to stop and listen to whatever they had to say.

  “What’s up? I hope you didn’t yank me out of winning a fight just to chat,” Sam asked.

  “Your people can trash any other group out there with or without you there to micro-manage them,” Samantha-image replied. Then she grimaced. “Anyway, you know me better than that. It’s important. Tell her, Knauf.”

  The little man stuttered for a few seconds. He looked from one Sam to the other again. Then he straightened himself up and looked into her eyes.

  “I’ve been sent here with a proposition for you,” Knauf said.

  “Really. I’ve never heard that line before,” Sam said, rolling her eyes.

  “This is no joking matter. The fate of Earth is at stake,” Knauf said. “We need your help.”

  Sam read his body language and looked into his eyes. One of her most valuable skills had always been the ability to read other people. Everyone had tells, little tics or motions or expressions which gave away what they were thinking and feeling. Sam was good at spotting them. Knauf was telling the truth. Or at least the truth as he knew it.

  Samantha-image nodded to her.

  “What’s going on?” Sam asked.

  “An alien ship has arrived in Neptune’s orbit. It’s building something out there. We think either its a weapon or a gate to bring allies. Either way, it’s bad news for humanity,” Knauf said.

  “Send the fleet in and knock it out?” Sam suggested.

  Knauf nodded. “We would. But while our ships have the acceleration to make the journey in time…”

  “Any human sent along would be splattered during the acceleration and deceleration,” Samantha-vision finished.

  “You want me - no, us,” Sam realized. “We’re digital. We can survive the trip. You want us to pilot your fleet and save Earth?”

  “In a nutshell, yes,” Knauf said.

  Sam felt an anger boiling inside her that she hadn’t realized she was still harboring. She thought that she’d come to accept her life in Valhalla Online. That this was all there was for her. Her ‘real’ body was still alive out there. As a copy, she had no rights. No citizenship. She was just software.

  Except she wasn’t. None of her people were, not even Gurgle - who had started off as software before becoming something more. They were alive, could think and feel.

  “Why should we help save people who think we’re not even worth basic human rights?” Sam snapped.

  Her double’s eyes opened wide, shock registering across her face. She should have known how Sam would feel - but then, the physical Samantha had never experienced everything Sam had. She might sympathize, but she wouldn’t understand.

  But Knauf didn’t seem phased by her venting. If anything he looked satisfied, like he’d expected her outburst. He nodded at Sam and gave her a thin smile.

  “I understand your frustration. Aside from the obvious - if Earth is hit by those aliens hard enough, the servers hosting you and your people might go down. You’re just data at this point. If the servers are blown up, you’re as dead as the rest of us,” Knauf said.

  He wasn’t wrong. Earth might feel like it was a million miles away, but Valhalla Online existed as part of the planet. It wasn’t in some other dimension. Sam might not enjoy admitting it, but he had a good point.

  “That said,” Knauf went on. “I don’t know that I’d want to go to war fighting for a civilization that stripped me of my basic human rights. In fact, we’re not allowed to. Weapons have to be under the control of a human being. It’s UN law, now. They know damned well that it’s in their best interest to keep loaded weapons out of the hands of people they’ve abused.”

  “If that’s the law, then we can’t help you anyway. But you wouldn’t have come here for no reason, so what’s the story?” Sam asked.

  “Suppose I said you could become recognized as a sentient being with rights again?” Kanuf asked.

  Sam sucked in a breath. It was something she’d never dared hope for. Life in Valhalla was exciting, but ultimately she knew that nothing she did really mattered. Everything was a game. Most of the events were scripted. The people who ‘died’ just came back again to rejoin the never-ending series of battles. She was playing a role in a story, nothing more. It was a life, but it wasn’t real life.

  Some days it wasn’t enough. Most of the time Sam fought hard enough that she was able to push those thoughts aside, though. If Knauf was really suggesting what she thought…! Maybe she could return to the real world, engage in real things again. Make a difference.

  “What’s the catch?” Sam asked. There was always a catch.

  “It’s a doozy,” Knauf admitted. “The reason for the laws about uploaded minds was fear, you know. People out there in the physical world were afraid that someone might simply make a thousand copies of themself, or ten thousand. You could create voting blocks that nobody could beat. Overpopulate the world with more virtual minds than real - I mean physical - ones.”

  “Sure. I understand that. What changed?” Sam asked.

  “Technology did. We’ve figured out a way to add copy protection to an uploaded consciousness. It blocks duplication,” Knauf said. “We can also tag each upload, essentially registering them much like we do with new babies being born. A birth certificate that becomes part of your encoded software.”

  That didn’t seem like much of a catch. They’d be free to do what they wanted, to live in the real world again. Sam’s thoughts raced, trying to think of the consequences. Sam hadn’t been sure she believed the full scope of the crisis, but this news dispelled her doubts. The UN must be really desperate if they were willing to consider an option this drastic. The alien threat had to be very real indeed.

  “The biggest downside would be that you’d become mortal, sis,” the other Samantha said. “No copies means no backup version. If whatever device you were in blew up - say, the spaceship you were riding in on the way to fight a bunch of aliens? You’d be gone for good. No respawn.”

  3

  There it was, the catch Sam had known was coming. It made sense, in a way. The gift and curse of Valhalla Online was the eternal nature of their digital life. Nothing mattered because no matter what you did there was always going to be a tomorrow. Sam and everyone she knew would just keep going about their virtual lives, no matter what any of them did. It was eternal life.

  And it was an eternal prison as well.

  Soon after Sam entered Valhalla Online she’d come into possession of a powerful hacked weapon, a pouch which generated unlimited arrows capable of erasing any targ
et they struck. She’d almost died to those arrows more than once. Some of her friends had died - permanent death, with no hope of retrieval. It had been a dark and terrifying time.

  The weapons capable of such things had been destroyed. All but one, anyway. Sam hung on to one of the arrowheads. It still carried the lethal code capable of erasing whomever she so much as nicked with the thing. More than once during the year since she’d considered scratching herself. What waited past death for a digital being like herself? She didn’t know what to believe anymore. Was there a god, or gods? Was there a real afterlife, and even if there was would she be considered ‘alive’ enough to get in? All questions that she didn’t know the answer to, but she did know how to find out.

  That arrowhead was always with her. She hadn’t used it - yet. It was the final answer. The one escape from the life and prison of her online world. Sam wasn’t sure if it was fear or hope that had always stayed her hand. The emotions she felt were too deep for her to easily parse.

  But here was a chance at something different.

  “I’m in,” Sam said. She didn’t even have to think about it.

  “Sam, are you sure? I mean, you can think about this. It’s going to be dangerous,” the physical Samantha said.

  “I know it will. But I’ve faced danger before. That’s why I - why we - put on the uniform in the first place. If I can find a way to serve again, it will be worth it,” Sam said.

  “Good. I was hoping you’d join us,” Knauf said. He ran a worried hand through his hair. “I didn’t have any other good options. You’re the only thing I can think of to throw at this problem.”

  “Surely you’re not the only one working on this, though?” Sam asked.

  “No,” Knauf said. Then he added in a matter-of-fact voice that Sam couldn’t help but believe. “But I’m the smartest. I wouldn’t count on someone else thinking of a solution I’ve missed.”

  “What’s next, then?” Sam asked.

  “Well, you’re a great asset, but you’re not enough by yourself. One battleship won’t have very good odds out there. We don’t know precisely what sort of technology base these aliens have, but it’s better than ours,” Knauf said. “We want to send a carrier out. Loaded with fighters. Small craft might get through when bigger ones are torn apart.”

  Sam wasn’t sure she liked the reasoning behind that. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to send a fleet of big ships?”

  “It would if you all were able to grasp astronavigation in the time we had prepared. It’s going to be hard enough teaching you to fly the fighters on the way. That’s going to be one hell of a crash course,” Knauf said. “Without proper training you could drive your ships into a planet, and that’s not going to help anyone.”

  Sam nodded. She thought about the distances involved. Radio waves would take too long to travel. Contact with Earth would take what, hours? Days? She wasn’t sure, but whatever it was it would be too long for anyone on Earth to help them if it came to a crisis.

  “You want me to see if I can recruit some more people,” Sam said.

  “In a nutshell, yes,” Knauf said. “As many as you can.”

  Sam thought about the proposal. They would have rights again. Be citizens again. They could own property, buy the devices they resided within. One of the worst things about her digital life was knowing in the back of her head that she was ultimately made up of bits of data that were someone else’s property. That wasn’t a state Sam intended to continue. But would the others feel the same way?

  “I’ll see who I can get to join,” Sam said, already rehearsing the words she would need to convince her Black Knights of the cause. “How many do you need?”

  “The biggest carrier we have can house thirty fighters. Give me everyone you can,” Knauf said.

  The fog rolled back in, growing thicker by the minute. The images of the two people in front of her were beginning to fade away. They were departing. Or she was returning to the game world, leaving this space in between the worlds. Sam wasn’t sure which.

  “Sis! Thank you,” the physical Samantha called out. “I’d do this for you if I could.”

  “I know you would,” Sam said, nodding to her with a smile. “Which is why I’ll do it for you because you can’t.”

  An hour later Sam was in the mead hall, standing in front of the assembled people. They represented half a dozen of the top guilds in the game, most of the groups which had made it to this last level, Odin’s feasting hall itself. Most players never came this far. They stopped in one of the earlier zones or even retreated back down to previous levels. The closer one came to Odin’s realm the more real everything became. Here in the end, death was almost as painful as it would be in the physical world. Few lingered there long. She thought most of them were probably a little crazy, including herself.

  It was also the place in all of Valhalla Online with the most consequences. There, players had the most to lose when they died, and the most to gain by surviving. It made each battle just a little more sweet to know there was something significant on the line, even if it was just pain and the avoidance of it. Sam didn’t think there was anyplace else in all the Realms better suited to finding the sort of people she needed.

  “That’s the long of it,” Sam said, finishing her tale of meeting Knauf. She left out her other self. It was too strange for most Valhallans - they were the echoes of a dead physical body. Of them all only Sam had a physical self still outside of the game.

  “Aliens?” Grimalf said. “Why did it have to be aliens?”

  That got a few chuckles and slapped thighs from those gathered. It took a few moments before everyone quieted again.

  “We’ve got a choice, folks. We can choose to go back out there and make a difference with our lives again. Or we can opt to stay in here where it’s safe,” Sam said. “Safe for now, anyway - because Knauf was right. If those aliens blow the hell out of our world, the servers we live on aren’t going to last any more than the rest of human civilization.”

  A few murmurs of agreement. Then someone stood in the back of the room. Sam knew even before he opened his mouth that he was going to be trouble. Lornif always was.

  “If they need us so damned badly, why the special rules? Why not just send us out there with backups remaining behind in Valhalla? Why not keep backups on the ship they send, for that matter? Then we could just go back out over and over until we finish the mission,” Lornif said.

  “Because they aren’t going to arm computers,” Grimalf said.

  “I’m no machine!” Lornif shouted.

  “We are to them,” Sam said.

  “Then the hell with them all! Let them rot,” Lornif said. He turned on his heel and stalked toward the exit. “Anyone who’s not wanting to lick the boots of them who think we’re just property can follow me.”

  There was a scuffle of shifting chairs as more people made to leave. Sam thought hard for something to get them to stay. She wasn’t sure how many had been moved by Lornif’s remarks, but he was a popular asshole. She couldn’t afford to lose too many of these people. They were running out of time.

  “What about your friends? Your family? Your children, and their children?” Sam called out. “Will you not go help them when they need you?”

  She stalked forward, her movement catching those who’d turned to go in mid-step. Sam had their attention. Now she needed to win their hearts.

  “People! We fight battles in here. We call ourselves warriors. But when we have a chance to prove that, to face real risk and become true heroes, what do we choose to do?” Sam asked. “Do we step aside, let others decide our fate? Or do we rise to the challenge of our lives and prove ourselves the greatest warriors anywhere? You can all stay in this empty life if you want. I will take up a real sword and bring the battle to a real enemy.”

  “I will show all of Earth that I am a true warrior. Who will go with me?” Sam asked.

  “Gurgle will!” The bugling call all but deafened everyone in the room. The drak
e clapped both forelegs over its mouth, embarrassed. “Sorry!”

  That started the chuckling, which turned into laughter. The laughter shifted to banter, which was always a good sign. Lornif scowled when he saw how few people remained on their feet to follow him. He beckoned, and they trailed behind him as he stalked from the room. Even among those who left with him, Sam could see a few glancing back over their shoulders. They might come along yet.

  “So when do we go?” Grimalf asked.

  Sam smiled at him, glad he was with her in this. She had few friends left. It was hard to let herself grow close to people after having lost so many. Being a leader set her apart from others as well. In Grimalf she’d found a kindred spirit. His quick wit was always welcome, even if he was getting too damned close to beating her on the battlefield.

  “Soon. Knauf will come for us once I have a list of everyone who wants to make the journey,” Sam said. “I have one other person I need to ask before I go.”

  “You mean him, don’t you?” Grim asked. His eyes darkened, and he looked down at the floor. None of them could think about Harald without sadness and regret.

  Sam least of all.

  “Of anyone here, he might be the one who would be most helped by this,” Sam said. “I have to at least try.”

  “Go, then. Take the drake. You’ll need to make good time if you want to get to him and back here. I hope you succeed,” Grimalf said. He clapped a gentle hand on her shoulder. “But…try not to put too much stock in it, eh? Harald left for reasons he felt were good. He may not welcome you coming to see him.”

  Oh, he probably wouldn’t be glad to see her at all. But Sam owed him a more significant debt than she could possibly repay. Maybe she could begin by offering him something better than he had in Valhalla. It would barely scratch the surface, but it would be a place to start.

  “Let’s go, Gurgle!” she called out. The drake winged his way toward her and landed with a scuffling of claws and a blast of wind. Sam turned away from Grimalf and mounted up before he could see how moist her eyes had become. He already knew how emotional she was about Harald’s fate. No sense letting him see her tears as well.